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Title: The Effect of College Location on Migration and Other Essays on Human Capital and Labor Mobility

Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis

Publication Year: 2002

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Abstract: This dissertation contains three essays on the relationship between human-capital investments and labor mobility. The first essay estimates the impact of attending college in a state on the decision to locate in the state after college. This issue is relevant for a variety of state higher education policies. Using data on a sample of U.S. undergraduate students from the newly collected College and Beyond data set, I find that attending college in ones home state increases the probability of living in that state after college. Furthermore, I find that attending college in a state that is not ones home state increases the probability of living in the state after college.I apply these results to college admissions in the second essay, which examines the conflict of interest between universities and state governments concerning standards for admitting in-state versus out-of-state students. Using data on public and private universities from the College and Beyond, I find that public universities set lower admissions standards for in-state than out-of-state students, while private universities on average treated both groups equally. I also find that the location decisions of marginal in-state and out-of-state students are equally affected by attending a public university. This suggests that states would have gained financially if their public universities had admitted additional out-of-state students. The third essay explores the relationship between the size of the local market for an occupation-specific skill and job-training outcomes. A model of job training predicts that as market size increases, job turnover among trained workers increases and training becomes more general. Using data on blue-collar workers, I test these predictions by exploiting variation in market size (within occupations) across U.S. metropolitan areas and between urban and non-urban areas. The empirical results provide some support for the theoretical predictions.

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Authors: Groen, Jeffrey A.

Institution: University of Michigan

Department: Economics

Advisor: John Bound

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

Publisher Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan

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Topics: Education, Labor Force and Occupational Structure

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